Interiors: a house after her own fashion

Christina Strutt’s home has the quirky flair that makes her fashion label, Cabbages & Roses, a hit with the A list

Christina Strutt is seated at her battered kitchen table, wearing an improbable pink floral pinafore and puffing on a meditative fag. The 54-year-old fabrics designer behind the Cabbages & Roses label, and writer on the art of natural housekeeping (just bicarbonate of soda and borax), is struggling to describe her idiosyncratic style, eventually offering: "Faded florals in pinks, and pretty things."

Strutt may be able to deflea a cat with lemon water, but a gifted self-promoter she is not. Still, there's no need for words when Brook Cottage, the 15th-century home near Bath that she shares with her land-agent husband, Mark, 60, showcases her repertoire of stripes, checks and toiles, and her knack for mixing fabrics and antiques to create laid-back, quirky interiors.

Cabbages & Roses is known as a tiny family-run firm that produces fabrics, table linen and towels, as well as "antifashion" handmade clothing. It has just a